Are electric vehicles REALLY environmentally friendly? Some scientists argue, “No!!!!”; others, “Yes!!!”
This discourse is causing a clash of titans. This question has some of the world’s top scientists plugged into a debate which is consuming a lot of energy. [Sorry, I’m uncontrollable when it comes to making a pun.] The debate is as far ranging as CLIMATE CHANGE. If the government can’t prove that electric vehicles will save Earth from warming, or cooling, whatever piece of propaganda is most useful, then the government believes it will fail to convince you to pay much more in tax dollars to support the electric vehicle industry and the need to upgrade our failing, aged electrical grid. The debate to justify the need for electric vehicles goes in every direction but one. The need for humans to innovate in every field of endeavour.
A recent Swedish study purports to show electric vehicles are NOT energy efficient and will not be advantageous in the fight to control emissions. On the other side of the argument are those who charge, [My propensity for puns.], that the study omits this or that cost and even nitpicks whether 400 km is the right distance to evaluate.
The debate is not about, and never will be about, cost effectiveness of electric vehicles, or if electric vehicles is what is required to save planet earth.
It all about what no one is acknowledging is absolutely necessary for us humans: INNOVATION.
By creating, evolving, and adopting a new technology humans LEARN. Learning goes to the heart of why we are sentient beings. Whether you believe that God, Allah, Buddah, or any other Supreme Being, or just coincidences throughout Nature itself, caused us to have the capacity to think and to INVENT, we are stuck with that gift and that ability. If we fail to innovate we degrade ourselves as humans. So we must continually push ourselves to learn, think better, create, innovate. Innovating within the field of transportation is as necessary as it is within any other field of human endeavour.
Time and time again, humans who waste this latent potential are punished by Nature through the Universal Law of Karma. By using this ability given to us by a Supreme Being, or by historical coincidences orchestrated by Nature, we’ve become something much greater than humans of yesterday.
Humans must continually strive and achieve…and, especially, innovate; else, we will fail to grow and, instead, will decline and perish. Perish or progress. As a species: the choice is ours. Innovate or die.
This is NOT about energy efficiency. Not about climate change. Not about whether the grid can bear it. This debate should not be about the benefits of electric vehicles. It’s not about any of those things. It’s about the need to innovate.
This is about the greater discussion of transportation. Do we innovate and bear the challenges and costs that go along with making changes and discovering within the field of transportation, or don’t we? The answer should be a resounding, “Yes!”
We must always innovate our asses off in every field of endeavour, including the field of transportation. Let’s do so with the same intensity, energy, creativity, as we must in any other field such a medicine, electronics, mathematics, optics, agriculture, and so on.
By innovating in one field we discover crossover benefits for other fields of endeavour. That’s a lesson that whatever Supreme Being you believe in shoves into our collective faces. Heed the warning: “Innovate or perish”.
Biomimicry is the hint and lesson laid at our feet. It’s a hint that we must think, transfer knowledge, and innovate.
By mimicking the skin of sharks, and borrowing from the rounded beak of porpoises, boats travel through water with much less friction, greater speed, and more efficiency. Without the curiosity and the willingness to experiment, this innovation resulting from copying Nature would not have been discovered.
Yes there will be a cost. There is always a cost to constructing something new or different.
Who should pay for change? All of us.
So, yes, we should ante up more money, if necessary to subsidize companies like Tesla. Yes, we should also pay more taxes to upgrade our electrical grid to support the electrical power required to charge a growing population of electric vehicles.
We should fully support the move to electric vehicles. NOT BECAUSE OF GOVERNMENT PROPAGANDA that electric vehicles will save the planet. That’s a ridiculous argument, as I have stated in another Nugget. We must also be willing to pay taxes to help support the development until the new infrastructure is in place and until, like newborns, electric vehicle manufacturers can stand firmly on their own two feet.
